[Carl Jung on Extrovert and Introvert “There is no such thing as schematic classification.”]
Dr. Evans: Of course, one of the very common misconceptions, at least in my opinion, about your work among some of the writers in America
is that they have characterized your discussion of introversion and extroversion as suggesting that the world is made up of only two kinds of
people, introverts and extroverts.
I’m sure you have been aware of this.
Would you like to comment on it? In other words, do you perceive of the world as one made up only of people who are extreme introverts and people who are extreme extroverts?
Dr. Jung: Bismarck once said, “God may protect me against my friends; with my enemies I can deal myself alone.”
You know how people are. They have a catch word, and then everything is schematized along that word.
There is no such thing as a pure ‐ extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.
Those are only terms to designate a certain penchant, a certain tendency.
For instance, the tendency to be more influenced by environmental influences, or more influenced by the subjective fact—that’s all.
There are people who are fairly well-balanced who are just as much influenced from within as from without, or just as little.
And so with all the definite classifications, you know, they are only a sort of point to refer to, points for orientation.
There is no such thing as a schematic classification.
Often you have great trouble even to make out to what type a man belongs, either because he is very well‐ balanced or he is very neurotic.
The last one is hard because when you are neurotic, then you have always a certain dissociation of personality.
And then too, the people themselves don’t know when they react consciously or when they react unconsciously.
So you can talk to somebody, and you think he is conscious.
He knows what he says, and to your amazement you discover after a while that he is quite unconscious of it, doesn’t know it.
It is a long and painstaking procedure to find out of what a man is conscious and of what he is not conscious, because the unconscious plays
in him all the time. Certain things are conscious; certain things are unconscious; but you can’t always tell.
You have to ask people, “Now are you conscious of what you say?” Or, “Did you notice?”
And you discover suddenly that there are quite a number of things that he didn’t know at all.
For instance, certain people have many reasons; everybody can see them.
They themselves don’t know it at all. ~ Conversations with Carl Jung and and Reactions from Ernest Jones, Page 23.
